Monday, March 09, 2009

Future Agenda Items

You know, I am really starting to get a complex. It seems as though items that I request to be placed on an upcoming agenda never get placed on the agenda. If another board member requests it, bingo, it's on there the next month. Could it be intentional? hmmmmmm

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What are those items? Do tell

Jennifer Abell said...

Just a few off the top of my head..
*alternative schedules
*Student Code of Conduct for sex offenses
*Board notification of incidents
*incident "ticker" for web-site

Anonymous said...

Jennifer,

I agree that we should have a "BOE notification of incidents", along with it being mandatory for the principal to send home a letter to parents explaining that teachers or students were assaulted, how many students were involved in the fighting, and what discipline will be taken by the sheriff's department. (No, we don't need educators to do an "internal" investigation. It's their job to teach.)

The hell with the school system. They allow these miscreants to exist in our system, reigning violence throughout the system.

Back talking teachers should not be tolerated, and should be meant with strict and dire consequences.
This type of behavior destroys the working conditions for the teachers, the learning environment for the good kids, and causes panic and an unsettled feeling of being safe for the good kids.
It also causes an incredible turnover of teachers in the county.
This results in no continuity, students constantly see brand-new teachers, and the learn nothing.

The hell with this propaganda of PBIS and the other liberal pablum.

If the working conditions are no better than federal prisons, let's hire prison guards in the schools to administer swift justice to the miscreants that believe they can get away with this rotten behavior.

I'm not so sure about a "Student Code for sex offenses." We know what they can and can't do. We have laws that do not leave much to the imagination. Enforce the laws through the legal system that we already have on the books.

It is the job of the administration to report these crimes, and the legal system to investigate and deliver the punishment. The information has to get out into the hands of the parents who pay for this system to exist.

And the same goes with teachers. Male and female teachers the fraternize with students should be escorted down to the county jail, not transferred to another school.

Deviant behavior should be publicly revealed through the newspaper and followed up with jail time after conviction.

"Board notification of incidents" to me is a big joke. First, no one at the board is prosecuting a case. Allow the police to follow up on this, then file for an arrest warrant, either against the student or the teacher.

The ticker tape idea is very good. But it should also include students, teachers, and administrators. Fair is fair, and equal justice for all.

Jennifer Abell said...

Anonymous,
Kind of in a rush this morning but I wante to briefly address a few of your statements.
First Paragraph, we agree on, with the exception of the the discipline taken be the sheriff's officer. Sometimes that doesn't occur in the first 24 hours and I believe a letter should go home that day.
Paragraph 2-like 5 about student behavior is dead on. Unfortuately the way it currently stands, if a teacher sends a large quanitity of students to the office from their class, they are looked down upon and possibly reprimanded for not being able to "control" and for the principals, the same goes with a large quantity of suspensions. It looks bad on the reports. I say the hell with the reports and get the kids out of the class.
Student Code of Conduct for sex offenses pertains to the disciplne and actions taken at the school regarding sex offenses. Look at your code of conduct. A student can sexually assault another student and be back in school the next day with a slap on the wrist but let that same student bring in a boy scout pocket knife by accident and he is expelled for the rest of the year. I just want a review and discussion of those rules.
Board notification of incidents, is just that, notifying the board members in a timely manner pf these incidents BEFORE we start getting the phone calls from parents. We're no0t investigating anything, it's just a heads up so we can help squelch the rumors before they start snow-balling. It also makes us look bad when we get a phone call two days after a serious incident and we don't know anything about it.
Parent notification is a no-brainer and that was my idea for the ticker. It would include the date, the school, the incident, no names for legal reasons could be used. But this way the parents would know and realize what is going on in the schools. The system cannot solve all these problems by themselves. It's going to take everyone helping, including the parents and until we as a system stop trying to hide them or throw them off as benign incidents, it's nt going to happen.